


Nothing To Do But Wait

by waywardjerk



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Gen, Mostly Clarke and brief mentions of others, Slightly Bellarke-ish
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-11
Updated: 2014-07-11
Packaged: 2018-02-08 09:51:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,381
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1936410
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/waywardjerk/pseuds/waywardjerk
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clarke wakes up in the quarantine room several days after.</p><p>An epilogue to the season finale.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nothing To Do But Wait

**Author's Note:**

> This mainly takes place in Clarke's head; she wakes up in the white room and we get some insight into her thoughts after the finale. I tried to address every aspect the way I think she would.

Clarke jolted awake with a sharp gasp. She could feel her heart rate racing as the blood rushed through her veins. It was only after making herself take several slow intakes of breath that she recalled where she was.

It was hard not to forget.

Back in the camp, each day had felt like a year. In here, time passed by in an incongruous blur. Clarke had eventually lost track and gave up trying to count the days. It wasn’t the first time she had been in captivity, of course. But the stark contrast between the fast-paced life on camp and the one here made the hours whiling away seem much more unsettling. Besides, the Mountain Men had stripped off her father’s watch from her before locking her in here.

Even so, it had no doubt been days before she eventually stopped having the nagging sensation that she had something to do. She would drum her fingers on her legs, thinking she had to tend to sick and injured kids or gather more medicinal plants –or even things she didn’t think she’d grow accustomed to, like taking first watch at nightfall and arguing with Bellamy over what was best for the camp. Each hour ticking by was one more hour she could have spent on making the camp more secure; both for themselves and from the Grounders.

It was also difficult remembering, but in a different sense.

With pang, she’d eventually realize that there was no camp left to protect.

They’d had to fight tooth and nail for their camp, and even then, they hadn’t even been able to salvage it in the end. With the blast, it simply ceased to exist, everything they’d built from themselves since day one collapsing into ashes and rubble. Not only that, but whole clans had been obliterated along with it. As far as they knew, with the exception of Anya, her whole tribe and the Reapers’ had come to an end. Not for the first time since her imprisonment, Oppenheimer’s words popped into her head. _I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds._

She would also realize that Bellamy and Finn, not to mention at least a dozen others of the survivors of the hundred, were gone. To the camp, they had been the rebel and the pacifier, the leader and the tracker. But to her, they weren’t reduced to their skills and roles; they were people. Two of her closest friends. Both dead.

Her fault. Her doing.

Clarke closed her eyes. Shaking her head, she opened them again and pushed the memories of screams and burnt skeletons aside. Trying to focus for the millionth time on her surroundings, she looked around the room.

There was the bed she was laying on with the table and infusion pump right next to it, and a couch and adjacent drawers further away. To her left, another set of drawers and the toilet, sink, and trashcan against the wall. Everything was exactly as it had been the day before, even the lights. They never turned off, which made it all that harder to keep track of time. Their fluorescent glare felt alien to her after weeks without decent technology, so she’d had to cover her face with the pillow to be able to sleep.

The whiteness of it all was so piercing that Clarke had to narrow her eyes to keep them from hurting. The only colorful thing was the painting to her right. _Van Gogh_ , she remembered from Earth Studies.

Back in the Ark, no one had had time to make art. It just simply wasn’t a profession; extra hands could always be used in every station for more productive things. Art was viewed as an expendable embellishment, which is why there weren’t any paintings decorating the hallways or rooms. It wasn’t really a hobby either: there was no paper to draw in. Clarke had had to make do with ink and charcoal as her tools and the walls of her room and prison cell as her canvas.

But the painting hanging on the wall before her was something else entirely. The time and materials spent on making this went against everything the Ark stood for. This artwork was done for pleasure, not need. _Starry Night_ , she recalled. It was almost comical how peaceful it seemed. How even in the darkness, bright lights shone a beacon of hope. As if nights on Earth were something calming. She knew that before the A-bomb, they generally were, but they certainly weren’t in her experience. In camp, they meant vulnerability. With mostly everyone asleep and her patients subdued for a while, things would mostly quiet down, but that didn’t make the danger any less imminent.

Clarke wondered what it would be like to live without fear of survival. It was what they all had ever faced for generations, to be honest. In the Ark, it had been the fear of malfunctions with the oxygen supply and the consequences of breaking the law. Down here, it was that of Grounders, wild animals, diseases, and sometimes even of each other.

The easiness with which one could get killed seemed to be the only similarity between the Ark and the Earth.

But at least she had been able to say goodbye to her dad before he got floated. On the ground, death came unexpectedly. She hadn’t even gotten a chance to say goodbye before they…

Sighing, she ran a hand through her hair and was slightly surprised when no dirt or leaves fell off. She had to admit, it felt good to be fully clean for once. But without much more than a tank top and Bermuda shorts, the cold made her teeth chatter and her hands tremble.

Clarke stood up from the bed and jogged a few laps around the room to warm herself up. When she passed by the door, she sensed movement in the corner of her eye. Glancing briefly, she saw Monty waving at her and stopped on her tracks. She leaned forward and rested her hands on her knees before straightening, feeling slightly breathless after the run. Waving back, she smiled tiredly.

Communicating with Monty had been hard at first. Nothing could be heard beyond muffled sounds, so holding a conversation had proved to be impossible. Nevertheless, Clarke had managed to relay the words from the sign beside Monty’s door by mouthing them to him. _Mount Weather quarantine ward._ Monty’s eyes had widened at that, raising his hand to rest against the circular pane of glass in the door.

After that, they had tried everything. Even shoving their furniture against the doors and trying to use it to break the glass, but nothing seemed to buckle or even dent. Every once in a while, a tray of food would slide from underneath the door, but that was it for any kind of human contact. After a few days of futile attempts, they had learned that there was really no use.

The door was never going to open.

Clarke couldn’t help but think that this wasn’t at all like back in the Ark. Back then, she’d known what was coming. She had counted the days until her eighteenth birthday with marks on the wall, thanks to her dad’s watch and the charcoal her mom had managed to get her, and knew exactly what to expect when the day came. She had been able to find peace both in her drawings and the knowledge that her fate was something she had brought upon herself alone. Her dad hadn’t dragged her into it; she had been fully aware of what she was getting herself into.

But here… she felt trapped. Clarke had no idea how long they were going to be there, and what was going to happen when the quarantine came to an end. Knowing her friends were suffering from the same unwarranted fate as her made her frantic. Even worse, she knew there was nothing she could do to help them.

The thoughts made her chest constrict, and she found herself suddenly gasping for air. Sighing in frustration, Clarke walked across the room. She sat down on the bed and, taking deep breaths, closed her eyes, and waited.

After all, there was nothing else to do but wait.

**Author's Note:**

> If you liked or enjoyed this in any way, then please be sure to tell me! It would make my day. And feedback is always a huge help


End file.
